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She said she didn't hesitate to help promote the new alert, as the instantaneous nature of it could be what saved another child.

"What I said at the time is that I want to help any other parent from going through what I have endured.

"I just beamed when I heard this because this is so good."

Facebook director of trust and safety Emily Vacher said all it took for police to activate the alert was sending an email to a dedicated Facebook email address that was monitored 24/7.

"As soon as we get the alert from the police, we prepare the notice.

"People care so deeply about the children in their communities, that really, this was just something that Facebook could assist with by building a tool".

Vacher was an FBI agent on the child abduction team before leaving to work for Facebook. She said Facebook was the perfect way to deliver messages that could be life-saving.

"We wanted to create a tool where the maximum number of people who would be able to help, could access the information.

"So rather than sharing by individual people, it's a more formal system."

New Zealand police commissioner Mike Bush said that while child abductions were rare in New Zealand, there were more regularly situations where a child went missing from home and was at serious risk of harm.

"When these sorts of incidents do happen, police take them very seriously and will consider every option available to us to locate a child we have extreme concerns for.

"Having the AMBER Alerts system means we now have another useful tool to quickly contact the public in emergency situations.

"If we can use it to help save even ... one child, then it is a system worth having."

The new tool was launched at 10am today at Police National Headquarters in Wellington.